On the Extreme, Or on Humanity

Anthropogenesis, the becoming human of the human being, is not in fact an event that was completed once and for all in the past: rather, it is the event that never stops happening, a process still under way in which the human being is always in the act of becoming human and of remaining (or becoming) inhuman.

By removing the uniform basic division on humans and non-humans, Agamben removes all possibility of a safety net of civilization, since being human does not mean remaining human. Luckily, Agamben is not only an evil warlock who removes security, which we hope is a product of humanity, but is also a good fairy who teaches that the state of being non-human needn’t last forever, since that is also a wavering (historical and personal) category, susceptible to change. It might be relative, but that is still a consolation.

Confrontation with places of mass executions, such as Dotrščina, requires us to thoroughly question the topic of humanity, independent of the level at which we are capable to think philosophically of such a place, event or its socio-historic context, or even the context which determines our current opinion on the topic.